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Vanilla Bean Pistachio Cake

Light, airy and full of flavor this Vanilla Bean Pistachio Cake is a fun and tasty flavor combination perfect for absolutely any occasion.

So last-minute, my mom called me and asked if I had any plans for baking the next day. I did, but nothing that was in dire need of being made right away, just some stuff that I wanted to try. So I said not really. Well here last-minute she asks me to make my aunt a 70th (sorry Aunt Karen) birthday cake! So obviously since I love cake and I’m the nice daughter that I am I happily obliged.

Well my mom said anything but coconut, so she said to brainstorm some flavors and call her back within the hour. So I had come up with some flavor ideas and I had reverted to trusty old Facebook to ask some of my friends flavor ideas. So I put the ideas all together and gave my mom a call back. The first idea out of my mouth was this Vanilla Bean Pistachio Cake! Well needless to say, I didn’t have to name off any more and she was sold at the first option.

Vanilla bean and pistachios go together so well. Both flavors are light and subtle and don’t overpower each other one bit! Luckily vanilla beans are something that this girl keeps on hand thanks to my amazing friends over at Rodelle! The vanilla beans that I used for this luscious cake are the ever delicious Madagascar vanilla beans, and you guy’s if you’ve never had vanilla beans before, go pick yourself up some of these babies!

So this is actually one of my go-to vanilla cake recipes. It’s super simple and it whips up really nice. I like to switch between vanilla beans, vanilla paste and vanilla extract depending on what type of filing or frosting I was doing. Since I was going with the light flavor of pistachio for this one I figured that vanilla bean would pair super well with it and boy was I right.

I know I probably say this all the time, but this is one of my most favorite cakes to date. No joke. Some of my other absolute favorite cakes is this Banana Cream Cake, Peanut Butter Banana Cake and this Black Forest Cake. But I have so many different cakes on my blog that it’s seriously hard to just pick a handful, so go search “Cake” and you’ll see some of the other amazing flavors that I’ve played around with in the past.

So getting back to this delicious Vanilla Bean Pistachio Cake. So I’m sure you could totally make your own homemade pistachio buttercream using pistachios but I’m just not that dedicated into making my own, kinda too much work for an already kinda simple cake wouldn’t you say? So in this frosting is a packet of pistachio pudding! So easy! Plus, it gives it a nice little green color and the flavor is just right for me.

A little vanilla is added to give it a little more oomph and sweetness, but all in all you probably don’t even need to add that! So if you have actually seen some of my other cakes, this is a new one for me. Usually I don’t texture my cakes at all, but this one I decided to make a change and textured the sides. I love how it turned out. No special equipment needed to do it, all I did was use my offset spatula and pressed against the frosting gently and spun my cake on my turnstile.

So my friends, I urge you to give this Vanilla Bean Pistachio Cake a try, I can’t express how much I love the flavors of this puppy! I think this is my new favorite cake…until next week when I make another and rant and rave about that one too. But no, really…go make this! And if you do make ANY of my recipes head on over to Instagram and tag me or use the hashtag #bakingwithtornadoughalli I’d love to see your creations!

Hi Dee, with any buttercream frosting powdered sugar is always added for flavor. Well for any frosting. You could always use the flour frosting in my Razorback Cake I have on my blog and just add the packet of pudding to that. That’s a really creamy frosting. One that they used in the olden days.

I Carrie, you sure can. It most likely will make 24 usually this amount of batter does. I would bake for around 15-20 minutes and reduce the amount of frosting used. You can use the same amount of pudding but less butter.

Hey, thanks for sharing this recipe. As far as the vanilla Bean goes are you grounding that? I see where it mentions adding the beans but nothing about removing it. Maybe this is a silly question, I’m totally not a baker! Thanks again!

Hi Erin, I can totally see how you wouldn’t understand. With Vanilla beans you cut them open and scrape out the beans with a knife and directly add them to your recipe. You don’t use the pod they’re housed in, although it is amazing to place in some sugar to make vanilla sugar to reuse it after the beans are scraped out.

Concerns on the frosting… after following your instructions on the frosting, I tried and it was very grainy. Any way your recommend getting rid of the graininess from the pudding? I tried beating extra long, I really love fluffy frosting, but even still grainy.

Hi Jess, I’m sorry yours turned out grainy that is unlike this frosting as its always turned out smooth and creamy for me. I would suggest adding more milk and beating beating for about 3 minutes to whip the frosting and see if that helps your issue 🙂

I have had that problem in the past also. What I discovered is that you need pure CANE sugar. Some powdered sugars are made from beet sugar, however, it is considered “sugar” and won’t be labeled as beet. Hope this helps.

As with your frosting, mine was silky with the exception of the sugar granules from the pudding. I think I might try blending the pudding mix with the milk to try to dissolve the sugar prior to adding to the powdered sugar.

I made this cake for my birthday and it was such a hit, here I am 5 days later making it for my mom. I’m going to try using the flour frosting you suggested in a previous comment. At what point would you add in the pistachio pudding to the frosting? Thanks!

My dad loves Pistachio and Vanilla. Sent him the ingredients for this cake in the mail for his birthday (he lives in Chicago, my sister and I in Texas). We made the cake together on skype and both of our cakes came out great. Thanks for the recipe 🙂

Hey Katie, yes this can remain on the counter. It won’t spoil or anything. I usually refrigerate all my cakes regardless just because sometimes temperature fluctuations can make the frosting melt. I’ll add that to my notes on the recipe for future reference.

Hey! I haven’t made it into a 6″ pan but here is some options – I would make it in 3 six inch pans and not reduce it. Or I would halve the recipe and have thinner 6inch layers. You could 1/3 the recipe of course, but that gets tricky and could change the integrity

Hello! I used 1/2 cup less organic sugar, doubled the vanilla extract for the cake batter and baked it in two Fat Daddio’s 6″x3″ spring form pans for 35 mins. The cakes turned out moist and delicious so this is my new “go to” vanilla cake recipe; thank you! My only issue was the chopped pistacio pieces contained in the pudding mix kept clogging my piping tips. Since this became a little frustrating, I turned the cakes into cake pops and melted the frosting to coat. Will definitely make for Christmas!

I made this for Christmas and my husband’s family loved it! I will try your other frosting mentioned in the comments next time because I found this buttercream a little too sweet for my liking. Great cake, thank you for the wonderful recipe!

This cake looks so great ! I want to make it for Easter, but I was wondering can I subtitute de vanilla bean with something else ? Like with more vanilla extract ? If so, how much should I use to for the cake batter and the frosting ? And do you think it’s gonna taste as delicious than it is without the bean ?

Hi. I substituted the AP flour for GF AP flour and I’m starting to get worried watching these cakes in the oven. They do not look like they have risen at all and they look bumpy and jiggly. Has anyone used GF flour for this recipe before with success?

This cake looks devine. I’m in Australia, has anyone attempted to make in Australia? Is the pistachio pudding jello? Also all purpose flour is this plain or self raising? Really hope i can give it a go.

Jello and pudding here in the states are two different things, the Jello brand itself does make pistachio pudding so if thats what you are wondering than yes, it is the jello. It would be plain flour for the all-purpose and not self raising. I hope this helps!

I finally tried something from Pinterest! The cake, is ahhmazing! The frosting is a little grainy. I left the mixer going for about 10 minutes and it was still grainy. I am new to homemade frostings, so I may have not done something correct. I do love the flavor and the color is perfect for our Easter gathering tomorrow. All in all, a lovely recipe!! Thank you for sharing!

– I really enjoyed the concept of it, the color was perfect for Easter! The actual cake ingredients were really tasty and it had a nice consistency and just the right amount of sweetness to it

– I really was not prepared for how expensive a fresh vanilla bean was and how labor intensive getting the bean extracted would be! Maybe it was my inexperience, but as a non-professional approaching this– it did not work out well and was expensive for the yield. I feel like just the extract or paste would’ve worked

– The color was perfect, but my frosting came out grainy, too. Even when adding milk and whipping it very thoroughly. Maybe it was the brand of pudding mix (Kroger brand), but it just never got that nice buttercream flavor and instead tasted extremely sweet and again, grainy! Next time I’d reconsider cutting back on the 5c of powdered sugar and get a different brand of pudding mix.